Bests & Worsts Reviews from Amazon

Let me begin by saying that I received a free copy of this book in exchange for writing an honest review after reading it. That being said, if it hadn't been given to me free I never would have read it. There were so many problems with this book I nearly quit reading about 1/3 of the way through, but I felt like I should finish it so that others will know about the problems before they spend their time and money on Ethereal Girls. First thing that bothered me was the cover itself. It looks like a comic book panel with the girls being drawn with enhanced bodies. Within the first chapters there are several unnecessary references to the girls' bodies specifically their breasts. It felt like the author was picturing the characters in his mind and then leering at their boobs like some teenaged boy. I hoped it was something that wouldn't be repeated, but I was disappointed in that the objectification of the girls' bodies happened several times throughout the course of the book. 50 Shades of Grey was more respectful of women's bodies than this book is. Secondly, though the storyline was a good idea it swiftly spun out of control. There were so many characters needlessly introduced that it was quite confusing at times. There were about 12 main characters that the story revolves around and in my opinion that is way too many. None of the characters were very well made or explained, other than their physical descriptions which always included their skin color - white, black, blue, red etc. It made me feel like skin color played too large a role in the character development. The black girl was from the ghetto (projects or the hood some would say.)The white girls were cheerleaders and if they were red, blue or purple skinned they were of course aliens. It was stereotyping at it's very worst. The third thing I disliked about this book was the interaction between the four main female characters. Having been a teenaged girl myself I know that this is not how girls talk to one another. The conversations felt very stiff and rehearsed and just felt strange to read. I wish I could explain it better, but much of what I'm talking about contains language not acceptable in book reviews. One girl said to another, "You are such a c$%t!" I've never in my life heard one girl call another the C word. There were also plenty of F bombs thrown out there from one "friend" to another in anger. It was obvious the author has never been privy to the conversations of teenaged girls either in real life or in whatever research he did. Lastly (and I'm not an English professor by any means!) the spelling, punctuation, grammatical and word choice errors were very distracting for me. There were so many I actually started noting each one I found (69 by the way) and sometimes there were 2 or 3 on a single page. It felt like this was either translated from a foreign language into English or it was written by someone who spoke English as a second language. For example: "Feel free to call me if you need anyway." should have been "anything"."Though so,..." should have been "Thought so,...". Also using spend instead of spent, tentacies instead of tentacles, wild turbine instead of wind turbine. I could go on, but I won't. My bottom line for Ethereal Girls: the main idea of a bunch of teenaged girls becoming powered super heroes and saving our world and other planets was a good one. Add in Liza, a main character with self-esteem issues, a girl who commits suicide so she can visit her boyfriend on another plane of existence (she comes back to life giving her the nickname Phoenix), an orphaned snake girl and the heavily stereotyped black girl and you have one big mess full of bigotry, racism, sexism, stereotypes, bad language, hate and violence. It took me 4 hours to slog through this book and that is wasted time I'll never get back.